


Black Lace and Remembrance

by GeckoGirl89



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cordelia's Apartment, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Introspection, Memories, POV Angel (BtVS), Packing, Post-Episode: s05e12 You're Welcome, Sexual Fantasy, Women's Underwear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:31:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10991922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeckoGirl89/pseuds/GeckoGirl89
Summary: Little scraps of silk and lace and cotton, garments too private and too intimate to be seen by anyone but you and your lover. Angel never had that kind of relationship with Cordelia, recent goodbye kiss notwithstanding, and he half-expects Dennis to slam the drawer shut, not letting him see.





	Black Lace and Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "any, any/any, lacy black underwear" on comment-fic: http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/626323.html?view=103561107#t103561107
> 
> I made a few minor corrections from the original fill on Livejournal.

It's almost a month after her death, and Angel is finally packing up all of Cordelia's stuff from her old apartment. Nobody has moved in, luckily, so her stuff wasn't thrown out and Angel can give it the attention it deserves.  
  
Dennis had let Angel into the apartment by silently opening the door, but he's been quiet since then. Too quiet, in Angel's opinion. The apartments temperature had lowered to levels that would have frozen out a human, but Dennis made no other protests. Angel can sense that Dennis wants to be left alone, so he goes about his task as quickly as possible so that he can leave the ghost to grieve alone in peace soon.  
  
Angel carefully packs things into boxes, but he tries not to look too much at what he's boxing up. He learned from his mistake when he was packing up her kitchen and spent ages staring at a toaster, recalling the one time she made him waffles at the Hyperion. He can't look too closely at her things, because every single item, from the mugs she had once used to heat his blood to the couch where she had once sat and told him she would stay with him until his shanshu, is a reminder of a life tragically cut short and an important person that  
Angel lost.  
  
Eventually, Angel makes his way to Cordelia's bedroom and starts with her closet. He removes her dresses, her skirts, tops, and jeans with the hangers attached, folds them, and puts them into cardboard boxes. Angel isn't sure what he will do with her clothes now, or with any of her stuff. He remembers how upset Cordy had been that he gave her clothes away during his so-called "beige period," and he can't do that to her now, even if she isn't here to protest. They might end up in storage. Back then, Angel couldn't stand the sight of her stuff after he had tossed her friendship away to go after Wolfram & Hart, couldn't bear the reminders of what he used to have. He can't bear those reminders now, not after she has left him in a far more permanent way.  
  
Angel's depression momentarily lifts when he spots a brightly patterned shirt that he had bought her, along with many others, after his return to the mission. He had been trying to get back into her good graces, and it had worked. She had hugged him tightly and smacked a kiss onto his cheek, which had made him smile like a lunatic and actually join her in a celebratory dance. It had probably already started by then, Angel thinks, that long, slow journey his feelings had taken from friendship to love. His cheek had tingled at the kiss, and he brushes his thumb across it, lost for a moment in the sense memory of that touch.  
  
He puts away that shirt, and soon he's done with her closet. He decides to finish with her clothes and walks over to her dresser. Angel opens the top drawer and stumbles back at what he sees.  
  
Underwear. Bras and panties. Little scraps of silk and lace and cotton, garments too private and too intimate to be seen by anyone but you and your lover. Angel never had that kind of relationship with Cordelia, recent goodbye kiss notwithstanding, and he half-expects Dennis to slam the drawer shut, not letting him see.  
  
Instead, the temperature in the room warms a few degrees, which is probably the closest Angel will get to Dennis's approval. Dennis is not happy about any of this, but for the moment, he seems sympathetic.  
  
Angel takes in a deep, unneeded breath and returns with steely determination to the intimidating drawer.  
  
He tries to not look too closely at the garments as he packs them, attempts to not imagine what Cordelia must have looked like in them. He never got to see her in her underwear, and, in retrospect, that's probably a good thing. Angel got a little too close to perfect happiness just being her friend, and being more than that would have certainly endangered his soul. But Angel still regrets that he never had the chance to make love to her, to show her how he really felt, that intense maelstrom of want and need and love that could never be adequately expressed through words.

After a couple of moments, Angel inadvertently sees something he recognizes. A black strapless bra that she had worn underneath her dress when they went to the ballet. Angel remembers it from backstage, where he and Cordelia had been possessed by the spirits of old lovers. He had slipped the straps of her dress down off her shoulders and trailed kisses down her torso.  
  
Angel reached out and stroked the satiny material of the bra with trembling fingers. He stared at the bra and recalled how she had looked in it, lying underneath him on that divan, bosom straining against the fabric as she had panted for breath, the dark material gleaming in the light of the dressing room and drawing Angel's gaze to her deep cleavage.  
  
Angel is just as hard as he had been that night, when he had seen Cordy like that for the first (and it turns out, only) time. He had known before that evening that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but witnessing her in the throes of passion, because of _him_ had put things at an entirely different level. He may have been possessed that night, but the awe, the tenderness, and the insatiable lust had certainly felt real to him.  
  
He gulps when he spots something lying next to the bra, because he recognizes that as well. He had seen only the top edge of them that night, just before the masked demons had interrupted them, but he would know that black lace pattern anywhere.  
  
Angel gathers up the panties in his right hand, irresistibly drawn by his curiosity about them and what could have been if he had ever gotten to see Cordelia fully in them. The thing that strikes him first is how thin and fragile they actually are. No wonder he could smell her arousal that night. Angel could have easily ripped the panties away from her with his hands or with his teeth. Or he could have teased her through the fabric, which wouldn't have been much of a barrier against his fingers or his tongue. Angel groans at the thought.  
  
He twines the panties between his fingers, noticing just how sheer they are, practically see-through. He instantly imagines Cordy as she had been that night at the ballet, stretched underneath him on that divan. Only this time, no one had interrupted them, and he had completely removed her dress. Her legs would be spread slightly open in invitation, ready for his fingers, tongue, or cock. She'd be wearing the lacy panties, and he would be able to see the dark thatch of her curls through them. When he gazes lower, he would see the dark fabric, already dampened by her arousal, clinging to her labia. And when he presses a finger against her entrance or her clit, he would feel a possessive little thrill run down his spine at being able to feel how wet he had made her, to hear how much his Cordy wants him when she cries out at his touch.  
  
Angel's vivid fantasy is interrupted when the dresser drawer shuts abruptly, slamming his fingers painfully.  
  
"Ow! Damn it, Dennis!" he yells.  
  
A cold breeze flows past him followed by a note. Angel grabs it before it blows away.  
  
_It's not 2002 anymore. You missed your chance with her._  
  
Angel looks up to scowl at the air surrounding him. "You think I don't know that?"  
  
Dennis doesn't respond, and Angel slumps against the dresser as he's forced to concede Dennis's point. Fantasies and memories are all he has left because Cordelia is dead and gone. On top of the dresser, he sees a picture of him, Cordy, and Wesley from their first year together and feels a wave of nostalgia overcome him. He'd give anything to go back to that time, one filled with so much hope and promise, one before he had lost so much. He'd give anything to see Cordelia again, even if it was just for five seconds.  
  
Dennis opens the drawer, and Angel unclenches his sore hand. The panties he had been holding fall flat onto his palm, and Angel has never felt more depressed because of a pair of underwear before. That was a ridiculous, pathetic thought. Angel places the panties in the box the other undergarments had gone in, out of sight for now. Gone and no longer staring him in the face and taunting him with the idea of mistakes made, chances never taken, and a relationship he had never gotten to have, but not forgotten. Never forgotten.


End file.
